


are you proud yet?

by tradrishanally



Series: The United States of Chaos* (*Read: America) [1]
Category: Statesverse
Genre: Autism, Autism Spectrum, Gen, Protective Siblings, Sad Ending, West Jersey and New Jersey are the same person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-06
Updated: 2019-05-06
Packaged: 2020-02-27 10:27:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,957
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18737191
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tradrishanally/pseuds/tradrishanally
Summary: “Hey- bubby. Let’s go. You did really good! You lasted the whole morning in town. I’m proud of you!” She shakes his shoulder, like she’s done every time she was proud.Jersey Siblings





	are you proud yet?

She finds him turning rocks by the water in his hands and he’s so focused on it that she doesn’t really know if he realises she’s there. She doesn’t even know why he’s so far from the people. It confuses her but she sits down in front of him and waits.

He keeps turning the same rock over and over, and when he does look up, she’s startled and jumps back.  He doesn’t lift his head high enough for her to see his face, the best look she got was at his forehead.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

He doesn’t respond.

“Can you speak?”

He coils into himself further, turning the rock faster. That tells her that he can hear her.

“Am I being too loud?”

He doesn’t move from that, and she finally notes at how heavily he’s breathing. She sits down again and waits.

OooO

She watches him as he calms down, and looks up, and she can see his face slightly, his big brown eyes now watching the grass flow in the breeze.

She speaks in the inside-voice Papa had taught her. “I’m sorry. Was I too loud?”

He nods, notices the bright blue-gemmed ring on her thumb.

“Why aren’t you looking at me?”

He shrugs.

“Why aren’t you in the town?”

He’s quiet.

“Is it because the town is too loud?”

He nods again.

“Do you know how to speak?”

“Loud things make me do this-” he curls back into himself with his hands over his ears.

“Do you want me to get my papa?”

“Why?”

“You’re all alone. There’s no one for a good 60 meters.”

“Okay.”

OooO

Lars is confused when the child fiddle with his thumbs and not look up at him, but is more confused when East Jersey runs off to the river.

“ _You can’t speak loudly to him, he doesn’t like it,_ ” she’d said.

“Hallo, my name is Lars. Do you have a name?” He kneels down to be less of a giant.

The boy shakes his head, not looking up at him.

East Jersey comes back with a rock and hands it to him. He looks up, but he faces her hands and not her face.

“You liked your rock earlier. I got you a new one.”

The boy takes it and immediately starts turning it around in his hands.

“Do you want to come with us?” Lars asks.

“It’s loud in the town,” the boy says. He stiffens slightly.

“There’s a long quiet route because we live a little ways beyond the town.” East Jersey offers her hand.

The boy takes it, but keeps his head down. “My name is West Jersey.”

“I’m East Jersey. This is our papa, the Netherlands.”

OooOOooO

Jolie is with her tutor when Lars confronts West Jersey- Levi.

“You are not right, are you?” Lars says.

Levi stiffens- he’s not speaking that loud but the echo makes it seem loud.

“What do you mean?” Levi turns the pen, stripped of it’s nib (He’d poked himself and it started bleeding earlier.).

“You do not like sounds above a whisper and you never look at people in the eyes.”

“I’m sorry, sir. Loud things make me do this-” He demonstrated him tucking into himself, hands over his ears. “I can’t look at people’s faces. The ladies in town made me leave.”

“Do you try and help yourself with this?”

“The rock helps. I can think better when I turn the rock over.”

“Does the pen body help?”

“Yes, sir.”

OooOOooO

Jolie tries her hardest and he can tell. He’ll watch her run around outside and yell and sing and climb up the big trees, but she’ll fight herself to be quiet around him.

The tutor isn’t quiet, and he has to repeat things so much that he gets frustrated and becomes louder, and then he gets frustrated when Levi curls into himself and covers his ears.

Jolie waits until he can take his hands away from his ears and then she’ll open his books and say everything until he gets it. And when he gets it, she’ll shake his shoulders and tell him how proud she is because she knows he doesn’t believe it.

OooO

Levi doesn’t understand why they’re decorating the house, but he does understand that the things on the tree make really nice jingly noises.

“Levi. This is yours- open it!” Jolie's voice is light, airy, and she’s smiling widely.

He pulls off the bow slowly, he runs his fingers over the soft fabric. It’s nice. There’s a pair of earmuffs, like Papa’s.

“Try ‘em on!” He winces slightly, and Delilah calms down enough that he can know she’ll try an be quieter.

He puts them on, and Jolie adjusts them  for him.

He can barely hear the crackle of the fire, and Jolie’s voice when she speaks is so much quieter.

“It’s so quiet when I put them on, papa.” Levi smiles.

“How do you feel? Happy?” Jolie asks.

“I feel like how I did when you gave me the rock before you brought me here.” Levi raises an eyebrow at Jolie’s skirt. “What’s happy?”

“Uhh. I don’t know how to explain it. Did it feel like it hurt- like when we’re too loud- when I gave you the rock?” Jolie stumbles so much when she speaks.

“No. The ladies telling me to leave felt like when things are too loud.”

“Well then, I think what you’re feeling is good.”

“Okay.”

OooOOooO

Jolie tells him that she wants to see if it could be possible that he could wear the earmuffs into town and it’d help.

He nods, puts on his coat- it’s scratchy and weird and he wants to take it off but the cold doesn’t feel good either- and slips the new earmuffs on.

She tells him that if he doesn’t feel okay then they’ll leave immediately. He nods.

The town is just barely coming to life, and the earmuffs drown out the smallest sounds and soften the largest sounds.

It’s fine until the sun is getting higher in the sky.

People move more and get louder and Jolie can probably tell that he’s not okay before he does.

“Hey- bubby. Let’s go. You did really good! You lasted the whole morning in town. I’m proud of you!” She shakes his shoulder, like she’s done every time she was proud.

Levi doesn’t look at her face, but he nods, and when Jolie looks at him, he’s beaming.

OooOOooO

Jolie tries her hardest to be quiet, to accomodate, but she can’t sit still or control her volume for very long unless she’s in hyperfocus.

Levi slowly starts getting used to the thuds of her running down the halls, and the off-key singing, and the yelling downstairs.

He starts a little at a time, Papa once explained it like “If you jump into the water, you’ll drown and hurt yourself, so go in slowly and wade and kick when you get far out.”

OooO

Papa leaves and It’s just Delilah and he.

Jolie always takes him to town early in the morning, when people are barely waking up. There’s enough noise that Jolie can be calm, but not so much that Levi is in panic.

The bakery makes him feel weird- it’s nice and warm but it just doesn’t smell good. It hurts his nose like loud things hurt his brain.

Jolie just lets him stay outside since he’s more comfortable with that.

(He always runs over to the barns and pets all the horses and watches the ducks waddle around.)

OooOOooO

Jolie’s sick, and it scares him.

He runs around constantly trying to do everything and get everything and make sure her fever is going down (it doesn’t) and that she’s sleeping easily. Jolie tries to get him to stop, feigning okayness. She takes off her ring when she’s so sore that just wearing it hurts.

OooO

Jolie’s scared. People like Levi were thrown into mental wards in asylums or considered changelings and killed.

She wants to fight, to stay alive, so she can protect Levi until he can do so himself. She wants to help him.

OooO

Levi starts learning how to do the tasks Jolie had done for years on his own. He learned to mouth-breathe in the bakery so he won’t hurt his nose, and to ask people if they can speak slowly because “He’s still learning English and wants to communicate better.” He starts trying to look at people in the eyes and that doesn’t work but looking at their necks is close enough that most don’t notice.

He wants to do better for his sister.

OooOOooO

_On April 17, 1702, under the rule of Queen Anne, the two sections of the proprietary colony (East and West Jersey) were united and New Jersey became a royal colony._

OooOOooO

Jolie sleeps in a box without large cracks, on top of the thickest quilt they own. She writes her shakiest note and sits it on her bed, and leaves a note underneath it.

OooO

Levi wakes up and goes to get the medicine so he can wake Jolie up and give it to her first thing. He puts the tea kettle on the stove and and heats up just enough tea for the both of them. He puts in the sugar and milk and then heads up, a large grin on his face- yesterday she could get up.

She’s getting better! Soon she’ll be running around, annoying the people in town with weird questions and trying to bring a duck back for him.

He opens the door and sees the notes, but Jolie isn’t in her bed. He puts the tea on the nightstand and checks in Papa’s old room, but she isn’t there.

He picks up the note and barely registers the words “box” and “closet.”

Jolie kept all of her books in large crates, but he never knew where she kept them.

He opens the door, and there’s a box big enough that Jolie could sleep in, and her books were all stacked up around it.  He peeks in, and there’s nothing that could resemble a person.

There’s a dusty dress, one oJolie’s favourite rings, she never took it off, and another note.

“ _I’ll miss you bubby. If you found this, then please don’t mourn too much_.”

He can’t help but read it as if she was speaking to him in the soft voice that she’d force herself to use when around him.

He takes the ring and slips it on, and takes the tea downstairs.

OooO

It hits him that Jolie is dead after he’d gone through town and everyone who he ran into would ask where Jolie was.

His eyes go wide and he drops all the groceries and runs home.

He puts all of the remaining things in a box and stares at it.

It hurts like when his nose and ears all hear the bad sounds, and it feels like someone is hurting him. He screams so loud and he only curls in further and his head hurts worse.

OooO

“Sissy. I miss you. I know you don’t want me to mourn but I don’t know what that is and I know what i’m feeling is bad because it hurts. I don’t want you to go but you did. I want you to come back. I have your ring for you. _Sissy_ -”

OooOOooOOooO

_**Modern Day** _

OooOOooOOooO

“Jolie. You’ve been dead for years- centuries- and I want you to know I can handle things better. I can look at people’s faces and it’s not weird. And I know you’re proud! I just- I just know it.”

He sits there, fiddling with a rock in his hands.

“Sissy, your ring finally fits-”

**Author's Note:**

> The work-in title was: lil ball of sunshine doesn't understand emotions and the ending is sad because risha can't make a happy by fall out boy.  
> I think it deserves that title.
> 
> Anonymous comments disabled to prevent anonymous hellraising.


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